Hairyducked Idiot
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Everything posted by Hairyducked Idiot
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And I personally need to see some sort of actual sustained success before I give the front office credit for a strategy that is aimed creating it. It's too complicated of a question. Do I need to show that we could have made the playoffs in 2012? Been "competitive"? Try to make some sort of estimates of the revenues we might not have lost without it? Do I use how players actually performed or how we would have believed they'd have performed at the time? Can I guess at what trades would have required? Can I assume free agents would have signed with us for the same price they signed elsewhere? I could try to hit on some of the biggest moves, but the small differences also matter. "Going for it" heading into 2012 is a butterfly flapping its wings by the time we get to a season and a half later. It's not really feasible to talk in any more than generalities, and I accept that those generalities may not convince you.
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I was making the point that the comparison was pointless by making a similarly inaccurate comparison in the opposite direction. Pointing to a team that had unbelievable results in homegrown development and more money than the Cubs is mirrored by pointing to teams that have had worse results and less money.
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I'm enjoying myself. If you aren't, then I grant you permission to stop.
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Putting together those sorts of alternative histories is a frustratingly pointless endeavor. It requires a lot of work and making a ton of debatable assumptions.
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Not yet, we're not. That was *my* point all along. The 1990s Yankees are a worthless example. *compares the cubs to the royals* Yes. That was the point. Do you get it now?
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Yes. Everyone sucks sometimes. Everyone eventually gets good. Everyone develops prospects. The confluence of those three things in one specific situation is not particularly instructive. Yes. Also yes. Assuming you meant 'and then,' that's not what happened. The Yankees were *always* adding to their team with trades and signings. They didn't do one then the other. We need some compelling reason to believe we can do it better than the other 20 teams that are aiming for sustained success. And the hypothetical future payroll isn't all that compelling of a reason.
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There's a bunch of interesting scenarios here: viewtopic.php?f=2&t=60154 There's one in the middle of page 2 of the thread that I really like.
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Not yet, we're not. That was *my* point all along. The 1990s Yankees are a worthless example.
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It comes back to the fact that these are two very different arguments: 1) It's possible to succeed based on the rewards of tanking the MLB team 2) It was necessary or desirable to tank the MLB team to get those rewards in order for the team to succeed.
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I don't know if it's worse that you took on that strawman or that you did such a poor job of taking it down.
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I think that overstates the importance of overslotting in the final years of the old CBA. It was one of those market inefficiencies that loses its potency as more teams jump on to it, and it was just about saturated at by 2011.
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My influence is often underestimated, but I'm not responsible for the Nationals' sucking in the post-Montreal era. If the argument is that the Cubs needed to expedite the rebuilding process because they were so terrible that they were starting with nothing, wouldn't going back to the beginning of the Nats' sucking be the logical starting point?
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Opinions should change with relevant new information. And my switching places with them would be almost exclusively do their good fortune to be able to draft Harper and Strasburg while we had to settle for Baez and Bryant. If you just want to look at the Rizzo era, that's one playoff season in four. Sure, that's an improvement over Hoyer, but I'm still not pining for it.
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I'm sure he wasn't. But that's what happened. At the end of the day, we don't have a good role model for a major-market franchise just flat-out tanking in order to expedite a rebuilding. That's why so many of us were flat-out adamant that they would not be doing that when Epstein was hired. But pointing to successful teams that developed prospects isn't particularly accurate or helpful to illuminating the Cubs' position or the viability of their plan.
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No. They flat-sucked for 7 years, then they're working on their second losing season out of three when their window was supposed to be open. That would not be awesome. When the role models for your franchise's plan have broken .500 once in nine seasons, maybe it's time to take a step back and have some perspective.
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We can be the Nationals with a little more money and a slightly worse prospects.
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Minor League Discussion & Boxes 8-6-13
Hairyducked Idiot replied to CaliforniaRaisin's topic in Cubs Minor League Talk
I think that was just a procedural move to stash him on the AZL roster for some reason. I don't think he ever actually went down to Arizona. -
The abandonment of 2012 also put them in a hole they tried but failed to dig out of in 2013, and we may yet see more of those consequences in 2014 and 2015. I'm far from convinced that what we gained in an expedited farm system will make up for the seasons we lost. We've locked in the downside and are praying for enough upside to cover it.
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I think when you look at the past decade or two of World Series winners, the most common path is developing prospects simultaneous to trying to compete at the MLB level (with varying levels of success). Teams like the Yankees, Giants, Cardinals all developed a lot of homegrown prospects, but they either did it while they were winning or during periods of downtime that happened despite their best efforts. At their worst, they resemble the 2013 Cubs. The whole "first we amass a pile of prospects, then we try to win, then we do win" paradigm has mostly been taken up by small-market teams that have had tepid at best results. The Brewers got their window, but it wasn't much of one and will end up being surrounded by awfulness on both sides. The Royals are finally at the point their fans thought they'd be five years ago, and it looks like they may peak there. The Nats certainly don't look like they are having the long-term, sustained success that many envisioned at this time last year. tl;dr Parallel fronts >>>> building the foundation first
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The approach *isn't* the same though. The Yankees never did what the Cubs did in 2012, which was nearly abandon a season and focus only on the prospects. The Yankees' prospects didn't come about as a result of a conscience effort to divert nearly all possible resources to building a base of prospects. I mean yes, everyone who wins develops players, so in that sense player development is at the basis of everything. But everyone not owned by Reinsdorf tries to develop players, so I don't think that qualifies as an identifying characteristic of your franchise.
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Yep, just be the 1990s Yankees. Develop a couple of HOFerse and then break the league with your insane spending levels. Easy as pie.
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Minor League Discussion & Boxes 8-6-13
Hairyducked Idiot replied to CaliforniaRaisin's topic in Cubs Minor League Talk
He's expected to miss a few days with a hip flexor injury. -
Minor League Discussion & Boxes 8-5-13
Hairyducked Idiot replied to CaliforniaRaisin's topic in Cubs Minor League Talk
It's entirely possible that they might want to eventually own and operate a minor league team. The Red Sox own their A+ team in the Carolina League. But doing it just to avoid a few rainouts each year (and a few more in unusually bad years like this) feels like an overreaction. -
Minor League Discussion & Boxes 8-5-13
Hairyducked Idiot replied to CaliforniaRaisin's topic in Cubs Minor League Talk
Baez strikes out again. *gets out of the bandwagon line, back into the cliff jumping line* -
Minor League Discussion & Boxes 8-5-13
Hairyducked Idiot replied to CaliforniaRaisin's topic in Cubs Minor League Talk
Just for funsies, http://mlsplits.drivelinebaseball.com/mlsplits/mlecalc says his AA line translates to 211/263/464 for a .727 OPS.